Keep soaring high, Garuda Muda
We’re not here to criticize the Indonesia U-19 soccer team as they failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the AFC U-19 Championships in Myanmar. Despite being defeated by Australia on Sunday, our boys are still the most promising crop of talent to grace the nation in a long time.
But what we should have realized a long time ago is this: they are still not good enough. So we’re actually doing them a lot of harm when we expect the world of them.
That is literally what the media has been doing. Take this article from Koran Sindo, for example. After beating South Korea 3-2 and qualifying for the AFC U-19 Championships, Koran Sindo ran the headline “Saatnya menuju pentas dunia” (“Time to head to the world stage”).
Yes, the U-19 team overcame all odds to beat South Korea, the giants of Asian football. But Koran Sindo and plenty of other media outlets were wrong to exaggerate the significance of one match; even the South Koreans are still dwarfed by the successes of Europeans and South Americans.
Are we that desperate for soccer success that we pinned our hopes on teenagers when the senior squad has never achieved anything worthy of note?
We urge the fickle media and fans to remember what the U-19 team has achieved so far in their short careers: just one ASEAN Football Federation U-19 Championship, on penalty shootouts in the final against Vietnam, played on home soil.
The harsh truth is that it was only a competition in which countries from one region – countries that have no history of soccer success on the world stage – took part. While we can be proud of what our U-19 team has achieved, we should never pressure them to be better than they actually are.
Let the kids develop into fine soccer players on their own. In all likelihood, some of them, like captain Evan Dimas, will, under the right guidance, become the best players in the country in the coming years. They are the right step forward in the evolution of soccer in Indonesia. Just don’t expect them to win the World Cup when they can’t even win the Asian Cup.
